CLOVERDALE — After nearly three years of planning, labeling, storing, sanding and research, the old Fort Jennings Train Depot is now coming back to its original glory.
Dr. Wesley Klir and friends have worked on the depot since Dr. Klir discovered it during a rural jog in 2005.
“I was out jogging one day and I came upon what looked like an old train depot,” Dr. Klir said last year when the group disassembled the structure. “I went home and got out the plat maps and made a few phone calls and found out it was the old train depot from Fort Jennings.”
The depot was constructed in the summer of 1917 by the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, later known as the Nickel Plate Railroad. Fort Jennings was once celebrated as a railroad hub on the Cloverleaf Line.
The station served passengers and freight until it was abandoned and later moved in the late 1960s. It has spent the past 40 years housing chickens, raccoons and mice.
Dr. Klir, his late father, Joe Klir, who died in October, friends Dave Hovest, Jay Neidert, Tony Kaverman and Cassie Kaverman and father-in-law, Roger Ladd, put in about 350 hours on the project in the first two years. All the wood that made up the outside of the structure was removed, labeled and put in storage late last summer.
Due to rotted wood and other issues, when the depot was restored, it was approximately four inches shorter than the original structure. New joists, flooring, roofing and ceilings were also installed.
On Saturday, Dr. Klir, Ladd, the Kavermans, Todd VonSossan, Neidert, Frank Miller and Kevin Trentman worked to put the siding and roofing on so the structure was closed in and work could be done on the inside, regardless of the weather.
Klir’s wife, Jennifer, her mother, Gloria Ladd, Cassie Kaverman and Ann Wittler primed and painted the outside of the depot Saturday.
It stands on Klir’s property on Road 22K south of Cloverdale.
The project has become bittersweet for Dr. Klir.
“My father was really excited about this project and I’m just sad that he couldn’t be here to see it go up,” Klir said. “It has been a little difficult to work on the depot without him but he would be pleased that we are going to finish it. It was a big accomplishment just to get it torn down last year.”
The depot, when finished, will include a lobby where passengers waited with a schedule board and pot-bellied stove.
The agent’s office will have a wrap-around desk, signal unit and bay window so the agent could see the trains coming.
A baggage room will include doors on both sides for transfer of items to a train or out the door for some other mode of transportation.
The basement will include a working model train and other memorabilia.
A signal house has also been salvaged and placed near the depot.
Klir and others have been scouring the Internet, garage sale and flea markets for signage and other artifacts from the old railroad days.
“I hope once it’s done, people will want to come and see how a railroad station looked in the early 1900s,” Klir said.
Hours of visitation will be set once the structure is completed.